Page 49 of Not Dead Enough


  ‘Pamela and Alfonso have been checking further into the criminal record of Bishop. They have been unable to find any mention of either crimes in the local or national press around the times they allegedly occurred, or around the dates of the convictions.’

  He turned another page. ‘Yesterday evening in a raid on garage premises rented by Jecks, we discovered a duplicate set of licence plates identical to those on Brian Bishop’s Bentley. In a raid on his flat in Sackville Road, Hove, at the same time, we discovered evidence of an unhealthy obsession Jecks had – or rather, would appear to have – with his twin brother, Brian Bishop. This included the discovery of video monitoring equipment linked, via an internet connection, to concealed surveillance cameras in the Bishops’ Brighton home and in their London flat. Jecks further admitted his hatred of his brother in a conversation Glenn Branson and I held with Jecks under caution this morning.’

  Grace continued, listing what had been found at Jecks’s flat, although he held back the information about the three dialled numbers that he and Branson had found on the man’s pay-as-you-go phone, as they were not really supposed to have examined it, and it had now been passed to the Telecoms Unit.

  When he had finished going through his notes, Norman Potting raised a hand. ‘Roy,’ he said, ‘I know it’s not strictly our case, but I did a ring around the Brighton and Hove travel agents this afternoon, asking if they had any record of a Janet McWhirter asking about flights to Australia back in April of this year. There’s a company called Aossa Travel. A lady there by the name of Lena found an inquiry form with the name of Janet McWhirter on it. She had put down her travelling companion as Norman Jecks.’

  When the briefing meeting was complete, Grace went to his office. First he called the SIO on the Janet McWhirter inquiry and told him about Potting’s findings. Then he dialled Chris Binns, the Crown Prosecution Service solicitor for the Katie Bishop case, and brought him up to date on their findings.

  Although the evidence seemed to be pointing increasingly away from Brian Bishop and towards his brother, it was still early days, and it would be reckless to move too quickly in freeing a suspect. Bishop was due to appear in court on Monday for his next remand hearing. The two men agreed on a strategy. Chris Binns would speak to Bishop’s solicitor and inform him that the Crown might be experiencing some difficulties with the prosecution as a result of new evidence coming to light. Provided Bishop would agree to keeping the police informed of his whereabouts, and to surrendering his passport, the bail application on Monday would not be contested by the CPS.

  When Roy Grace finished the call, he sat in silence for a long time. There was one part of the puzzle still missing. One very big part. From one of the files on the pile on his desk, he removed Brian Bishop’s birth and adoption certificates, and those of his brother.

  His door opened and Glenn Branson’s head appeared round. ‘I’m just off, old-timer,’ he said.

  ‘What you looking so happy about?’ Grace asked.

  ‘She’s letting me put the kids to bed tonight!’

  ‘Wow. Progress! Does that mean I get my house back soon?’

  ‘I dunno. One swallow doesn’t make a summer.’

  Grace looked back down at the adoption certificates. Branson was right. One swallow did not indeed make a summer. Nor, it seemed, did two men under arrest make a solution to a puzzle.

  Norman Jecks just said this morning that he spent the first months of his life in an incubator. And that his parents were dead. And according to his parents, he was dead.

  Why were they lying about each other?

  �

  121

  For the first time in what seemed a long, long week Grace was in bed before midnight. But he slept only fitfully, trying to move as little as possible as he lay awake in order not to disturb Cleo, who was naked and warm and sleeping like a baby in his arms.

  Maybe when Norman Jecks was behind bars, he would start to relax. All the time he was at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, it was too easy for a man of his cunning to escape, despite the police guard. And every unfamiliar noise in the night was potentially a Norman Jecks footfall.

  It was the Black & Decker power drill that Cleo had found in her broom cupboard that upset him – and her – the most. She had never owned an electric drill in her life and had had no workmen in the house recently. It was as if Jecks had left behind a souvenir of his visit, a little token, a reminder.

  Because You Love Her.

  The drill was now in an evidence bag, safely locked up in the crime scene evidence store at the Major Incident Suite. But the image of what it represented, and those words breathed at him earlier today by Jecks, from his hospital bed, would shadow him for a long time to come.

  His mind returned to Sandy. To Dick Pope’s utter conviction that he and Lesley had seen her in Munich.

  If it was true, and she had run away from them, what did that say? That she had started over again and wanted no connection with their previous life? But that made no sense. They had been so happy together – or so he had thought. Perhaps she had had a breakdown of some kind? In which case Kullen’s suggestion of trawling all the doctors, hospitals and clinics in the Munich area might produce a result. But then what?

  Would he try to rebuild a life with her knowing she had left him once and might do it again? And destroy all he had with Cleo in the process?

  There was of course the possibility that the Popes were mistaken. That it had been just another woman who resembled Sandy, like the one he had chased across the Englischer Garten. It was nine years now. People changed. Sometimes even he had difficulty remembering Sandy’s face.

  And the truth was, in his heart, it was Cleo who now mattered most in life.

  Just that one day in Munich had nearly caused a rift in his relationship with her. To engage in a full-scale search of the city and all the time that involved would be a major undertaking and who knew what repercussions that might have? He’d had nine years of chasing shadows on wild-goose chases. Perhaps it was time to stop now. Time to leave the past behind him.

  He fell asleep resolved to try, at any rate.

  And awoke two hours later, shaking and shivering from the recurring nightmare that visited him every few months or so. Sandy’s voice screaming out of the darkness. Screaming for help.

  It was nearly an hour before he fell asleep again.

  At six in the morning he drove home, changed into his jogging kit and went down to the seafront. Almost every muscle in his body was hurting and his ankle was too painful to run, so he hobbled down to the promenade and then back, the fresh morning air helping to clear his head.

  As he stepped out of the shower afterwards and began drying himself, he heard Branson’s bedroom door open, then the toilet seat being lifted. Moments later, as he began lathering his face, he heard his friend urinating with a sound like a supertanker emptying its bilges.

  Finally the cistern clanked and flushed. Then Branson called out, ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Am I hearing right?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve decided I would make you a lovely wife.’

  ‘Just make me tea. Hold the nuptials, OK?’

  ‘Tea coming up!’

  Branson was humming cheerily as he clumped down the stairs and Grace wondered what pills he was on this morning. Then he turned his mind back to the business of shaving, and the problem he had still not been able to solve. Although at some time during the small hours, he had realized what his starting point should be.

  Shortly after ten he was back in the small, cubicle-like waiting room in the registrar’s offices at Brighton town hall, holding a file folder.

  After only a couple of minutes, the tall, urbane figure of Clive Ravensbourne, the Superintendent Registrar, entered. He shook Grace’s hand, looking very much more at ease than on the previous occasion they had met, a couple of days ago – if a little curious.

  ‘Detective Superintendent, very nice to see you again. How can I help you?’

/>   ‘Thank you for coming in on a Saturday, I appreciate it.’

  ‘No problem. It’s a working day for me.’

  ‘It’s in connection with the same murder inquiry I came to see you about on Thursday,’ Grace said. ‘You kindly gave me some information about a twin. I need you to verify it for me – it’s very urgent and important to my inquiry. Certain things are just not adding up.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ravensbourne said. ‘Whatever I can do – I will try.’

  Grace opened the folder and pointed at Brian Bishop’s birth certificate. ‘I gave you the name of this chap, Desmond Jones, and asked if you could establish if he had a twin, and the twin’s birth name. There were twenty-seven possible babies all with the same surname. You suggested you could bypass having to go through each one simply by looking up the records from the index number on the birth certificate.’

  Ravensbourne nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, correct.’

  ‘Could I ask you to double-check for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Ravensbourne took the birth certificate and went out of the room. A couple of minutes later he returned with the large dark red, leather-bound registry book, put it down with the birth certificate next to it and leafed through it anxiously. Then he stopped and checked the birth certificate again. ‘Desmond William Jones, mother Eleanor Jones, born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 7 September 1964 at three forty-seven a.m. And it says Adopted, right? This is the right chap?’

  ‘Yes, he checks out. It’s the one you gave me as his twin brother who doesn’t.’

  The registrar returned to the tome and looked down the page. ‘Frederick Roger Jones?’ he read out. ‘Mother Eleanor Jones, born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 7 September 1964 at four o five a.m. Also subsequently adopted.’ He looked up. ‘That’s your twin. Frederick Roger Jones.’

  ‘Are you sure? You couldn’t be mistaken?’

  The registrar turned the book around, so that Grace could see for himself. There were five entries.

  ‘That birth certificate you have, it’s actually a copy of the original – the original is this entry in here, in this book. Do you understand that?’ the registrar asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Grace replied.

  ‘It’s an exact copy. This is the original entry. Five entries to a page – see – the bottom two are your chaps, Desmond William Jones and Frederick Roger Jones.’

  As if to demonstrate his veracity, Ravensbourne turned over the page. ‘You see, there are another five on this—’

  He stopped in mid-sentence and turned back a page, then turned it forward again. And then he said, ‘Oh. Oh dear. Oh, my God, it never occurred to me! I was in a hurry when you came to see me, I remember. I saw the twin – you were looking for a twin. It never occurred to me—’

  There on the next page, the top entry, in neat, slanted black handwriting, was: Norman John Jones, mother Eleanor Jones, born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, 7 September 1964 at four twenty-four a.m.

  Grace looked at the man. ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’

  The registrar was nodding furiously, half out of embarrassment, half from excitement. ‘Yes. Born nineteen minutes later. The same mother. Absolutely!’

  �

  122

  Back-issue after back-issue of the Argus newspaper sped past Roy Grace’s eyes. He sat hunched in front of the microfiche unit in the Brighton and Hove Reference Library, scrolling through the film containing the 1964 editions, slowing down occasionally to check the dates. April . . . June . . . July . . . August . . . September.

  He stopped the machine halfway through the 4 September 1964 pages, then slowly cranked forwards. Then he stopped again when he reached the front page of the 7 September edition. But there was nothing of significance. He read through each of the following news pages carefully, but still could find nothing.

  The splash of 8 September was a local planning scandal. But then, two pages on, a photograph leapt out at him.

  It was of three tiny babies, lying asleep in a row inside the glass casing of an incubator. Inset next to this was a photograph of a small, mangled car. Above was the caption: Miracle Babies Survive Horror Death Crash. And there was another photograph, of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties. Grace read every word of the article straight through, twice. His eyes went back to the picture of the babies in the incubator, to the woman’s face, to the car, then he read the words again, cutting through the sensational adjectives, just picking up the facts.

  Police were investigating why the Ford Anglia veered across the A23, in heavy rain early on the evening of 6 September into the path of a lorry . . . Eleanor Jones, single mother, science teacher . . . thought she was carrying twins . . . had been undergoing treatment for depression . . . Eight and a half months pregnant . . . kept on life support in intensive care after they were delivered prematurely by Caesarean section . . . mother died during the operation . . .

  He stopped the machine, removed the microfiche, replaced it in its container and handed it to the librarian. Then he almost ran to the exit.

  Grace could barely contain his excitement as he drove back to Sussex House. He was longing to see everyone’s faces in the briefing meeting this evening, but most of all he was looking forward to telling Cleo. Telling her that they had got the right man, for sure.

  But first he wanted speak to the helpful post-adoption counsellor, Loretta Leberknight, and ask her one question, just as a double-check. He was dialling her number on the hands free when his phone rang.

  It was Roger Pole, the SIO for the attempted murder of Cleo, thanking him for the information about the discovery of the MG TF workshop manual in Norman Jecks’s garage and informing him they were now making Jecks the prime suspect.

  ‘You won’t be needing to look any further,’ Grace told him, pulling over and stopping. ‘Out of interest, how’s the poor scumbag who tried to steal the car?’

  ‘He’s still in intensive care at East Grinstead, with 55 per cent burns, but they are expecting him to live.’

  ‘Maybe I should send him some flowers for saving Cleo’s life,’ he said.

  ‘From what I hear, a bag or two of heroin would be more appreciated.’

  Grace grinned. ‘How’s the officer from the Car Crime Unit?’

  ‘PC Packer? OK. He’s been released from hospital, but he has quite severe burns on his face and hands.’

  Grace thanked him for the information, then called Loretta Leberknight. When he told her what had happened she laughed sympathetically. ‘I’ve known that before,’ she said.

  ‘There’s one thing that’s bothering me, though,’ Grace said. ‘His first two names, Norman John. When we spoke originally, you told me that adoptive parents change their names, or perhaps move the birth name to a middle name. In this instance he has both names. Is there any significance?’

  ‘None,’ she said. ‘Most parents change but some don’t. Sometimes if a child isn’t adopted for a while they go to a care home – foster parents – and then they’ll probably end up keeping their birth Christian names.’

  Grace bumped straight into Glenn Branson as he headed across to his office.

  ‘What you looking so pleased about, old-timer?’ Branson asked.

  ‘I’ve got some good news. And hey, you’re in a pretty sunny mood yourself today,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got some good news too.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You first.’

  Grace shrugged. ‘You remember that nasty social worker in the adoption services?’

  ‘The one with the pink hair and bright green glasses? Face like roadkill?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘Got a date with her, have you? She’d be well fit. So long as you take a paper bag to put over her head.’

  ‘Yes, I have got a date with her. And her boss. At three o’clock this afternoon. Remember I told her that if she was withholding information that could be helpful to us, I would hang her
out to dry?’

  Branson nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to hang the bitch out to dry.’

  ‘Not that you’re a vengeful sort of person.’

  ‘Me? Vengeful? Nah!’ Grace looked at his watch. ‘I’ve just had an interesting time down at the town hall and the reference library. You’re going to like this a lot. I think we are game, set and match on Norman Jecks. Fancy a lunchtime jar, and I’ll tell you about it?’

  ‘I would – but I have to dash out.’

  ‘So what’s your good news?’

  The DS beamed. ‘Actually, you know what, it’s probably good news for you too.’

  ‘The suspense is killing me.’

  His beam broadening into the happiest smile Grace had seen on his friend’s face in many months, Glenn Branson said, ‘I’ve gotta go see a man about a horse.’

  Table of Contents

  Begin reading

  Title page

  Copyright notice

  Acknowledgements

 


 

  Peter James, Not Dead Enough

 


 

 
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